Neil Gorsuch: Supreme Court nominee's past decision on birth control raises alarm among women's rights groups

Planned Parenthood says nominees must protect women's 'fundamental rights'

Neil Gorsuch with Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House (EPA)

Democrats are planning to challenge Donald Trump’s nomination of conservative judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court amid protests against the “extreme” candidate.

The President hailed the Harvard and Oxford graduate as “the man who our country really needs to ensure the rule of law and justice”, but critics accuse him of attacking women’s rights and upholding a fundamentalist interpretation of American law.

Judge Gorsuch, who has been on the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals since 2006, has family connections to the Republican party and has argued against euthanasia and liberal “addiction to the courtroom” in his writings.

Demonstrators gather outside the US Supreme Court after Donald Trump announced Neil Gorsuch as his nominee to fill the seat Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on 31 January (AFP/Getty Images) (AFP/Getty)

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, accused the judge of “repeatedly siding with corporations over working people, demonstrating a hostility toward women's rights, and most troubling, is hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me sceptical that he can be a strong, independent justice on the court.”

He said the US needs an independent Supreme Court judge who will “preserve our democracy, protect fundamental rights and will stand up to a President who has already shown a willingness to bend the Constitution”.

Hundreds protested outside Mr Schumer’s home in Brooklyn after Mr Trump announced his nomination on Tuesday, calling on him to block his confirmation and vote against the President’s picks for cabinet.

Judge Gorsuch is expected to fill a seat left vacant for 10 months after Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, was not granted a hearing or vote by Republicans.

His confirmation would restore Supreme Court to nine justices, with the swing vote between conservatives and liberals on Justice Anthony M Kennedy, whose rulings have fallen on both sides of the political spectrum.

Judge Gorsuch’s mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was the first female director of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Reagan administration.

Democratic senator Jeff Merkley described the appointment as a “stolen seat being filled by an illegitimate and extreme nominee”, pledging to do everything in his power to “stand up against this assault on the court”.

Mr Merkley suggested he will hold up the nomination and force Republicans to find 60 needed votes for confirmation, with the party already holding a 52-48 majority in the Senate.

Several other Democrats came out in immediate opposition to Judge Gorsuch, including Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who said he has sided with large companies over workers.

Sherrod Brown, the senior senator for Ohio, said his rulings had not favoured American workers or women's rights, while Oregon senator Ron Wyden cited his stand against laws that allow terminally ill people to end their lives.

The judge set out his argument in his 2006 book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, writing: “All human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Judge Gorsuch, a Protestant, has sided with groups that successfully challenged the Obama administration's requirements for employers to provide health insurance including contraception in the Hobby Lobby Stores v Sebelius case.

"As they understand it, ordering their companies to provide insurance coverage for drugs or devices whose use is inconsistent with their faith itself violates their faith, representing a degree of complicity their religion disallows,” he wrote of the claimants.

Planned Parenthood is among the groups opposing his nomination, issuing a statement saying: “Nominees to the highest court in the land must make clear that they will protect our fundamental rights, including the right of a woman to control her body.”

The judge has never ruled on abortion and he is not expected to call into question high-profile rulings on the issue, same-sex marriage or interfere in a case currently before the Supreme Court on the rights of transgender students.

In 2013, he upheld a lower court's ruling that a police officer could not be prosecuted after using a taser on a 22-year-old student, who died from the incident.

He has also railed against “American liberals have becoming addicted to the courtroom” to “effect their social agenda” in an article for the National Review in 2005.

Like Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who died suddenly last year, Judge Gorsuch supports support textualism, the interpretation of law according to its plain text, and maintains a strict interpretation of the US Constitution as understood by the Founding Fathers.

Several Democrats could vote for Judge Gorsuch’s appointment, with Montana senator Jon Tester saying he could “share our values”.

He has been praised by Republicans, who are bracing for a potentially long struggle to have the 49-year-old judge confirmed as the court’s youngest justice in decades.

Five judges in the Supreme Court have voted to preserve abortion and gay rights, meaning Judge Gorsuch’s views on the issues are unlikely to have a major effect unless one of its liberal members leaves.

Upon his appointment, he vowed to "do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country".

Additional reporting by AP